The Jews disappear:
State sanctioned.
The refugees vanish:
Benign neglect.
The young children
Born of unwed mothers
Delivered by the state unto charity and disgust
(With all its wimpled violence)
Regurgitate the dark neglect
That stalked their narrow days
Their tiny bones dug up with public regret
Many lifetimes later.
Everyone knew.
In Germany
The acres of Jewish property
Were auctioned with full public order.
Across the Pacific Solution
In Manus Island
Illegality blooms:
The refugees remain
As everyone knows
On an endless trek
Awaiting their anticipated demise
From the body politic:
It is illegal to report abuse.
In Ireland
The unsanctified bones
Are bought out into the light
(Everyone knew).
Their place was marked by silent prayers
And the giddy, interior belief
That their shame buried them
In god’s silent justice.
Better off dead
Waited on by prayers and eternal peace:
So say the un-persecuted.
History may be buried
Staunched
Hidden
Excised
But its DNA can never be erased.
Church and State
Weave their way around the dispossessed.
Their incantations and incense float heavenwards
Transcendent on this fear of ‘the other’, ‘the lustful’, ‘the enemy’.
Their brutal logic relies on named transgression
And the expiation of its dark hued silence
When pain is inflicted and sorrows unleashed
Always on somebody else.
Time and memory are layered
Like a geological fissure.
We watch and keep silent
And await the Historian’s pen:
There is no forgiveness in knowing.
Gar Jones: April 2017
State sanctioned.
The refugees vanish:
Benign neglect.
The young children
Born of unwed mothers
Delivered by the state unto charity and disgust
(With all its wimpled violence)
Regurgitate the dark neglect
That stalked their narrow days
Their tiny bones dug up with public regret
Many lifetimes later.
Everyone knew.
In Germany
The acres of Jewish property
Were auctioned with full public order.
Across the Pacific Solution
In Manus Island
Illegality blooms:
The refugees remain
As everyone knows
On an endless trek
Awaiting their anticipated demise
From the body politic:
It is illegal to report abuse.
In Ireland
The unsanctified bones
Are bought out into the light
(Everyone knew).
Their place was marked by silent prayers
And the giddy, interior belief
That their shame buried them
In god’s silent justice.
Better off dead
Waited on by prayers and eternal peace:
So say the un-persecuted.
History may be buried
Staunched
Hidden
Excised
But its DNA can never be erased.
Church and State
Weave their way around the dispossessed.
Their incantations and incense float heavenwards
Transcendent on this fear of ‘the other’, ‘the lustful’, ‘the enemy’.
Their brutal logic relies on named transgression
And the expiation of its dark hued silence
When pain is inflicted and sorrows unleashed
Always on somebody else.
Time and memory are layered
Like a geological fissure.
We watch and keep silent
And await the Historian’s pen:
There is no forgiveness in knowing.
Gar Jones: April 2017